God was so lavish to us once, but here
He hath repented, jealous of His beams."
Lines, again, like "Pierced her, and odour full of arrows was," "Realizes all the uncoloured dawn," "Yet followed a riddled memorable flag," are, no doubt, extreme instances, but they are typical of many bad lines. Occasionally he falls flat on some harsh prosaic phrase, like "beautiful indolence was on our brains." Nor is he always happy in his attempts at novelty in phraseology, as in his employment of the words "liable," "inaccurate," "pungent"; and these faults in rhythm and diction are the more remarkable, as the really subtle mastery over rhythmic expression which he exhibits at times, and his singularly felicitous epithets, turns, and phrases are among his most striking gifts. Take a few out of very many: "A bleak magnificence of endless hope," "That common trivial face, of endless needs," "The mystic river, floating wan," "And the moist evening fallow, richly dark," "That palest rose sweet on the night of life." How noble is the rhythm and imagery of the following:—
"All the dead
The melancholy attraction of Jesus felt:
And millions, like a sea, wave upon wave,
Heaved dreaming to that moonlight face, or ran
In wonderful long ripples, sorrow-charmed.
Toward him, in faded purple, pacing came
Dead emperors, and sad, unflattered kings;